Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Sorry but I don't get how is it related. My proposal, at the beginning at least, would involve only change to NPC control. All other stats and attributes would be unchanged. They'd retain their strengths and vulnerabilities. Only behave less stupid.

You have scratched subject I didn't want to touch for time being: the incentive. There needs to be one to convince a mission runner to remove safety, to allow such addition. And there needs to be one to convince another player to spend their time on most probably futile attempts at kicking such mission runner's ass.

On the other hand, rewards cannot be too great, to reduce temptation to game the system and after all, L5 missions were removed from hisec for a reason.

In summary I do not have ready answer how to manage that and I'd leave this part out of the discussion.


I do not agree with this statement. The people who run missions, and I conjecture they'd be the main source of such animators, would not FC fleets anyway, nor run gangs, wars, etc. My point is, the population is already segmented and this feature wouldn't change it much, except of maybe introducing another microprofession.

This. Maybe in the OP I wasn't clear enough but I assume that animator is just dropped into some randomly chosen encounter. So you don't know in advance where and against whom.

Also for duration of such event I think fleeting should be disallowed (that would be too easy).

There is nothing stopping you from doing this right now in lowsec.

Well I need friends, an offgrid unkillable perfect booster and an officer fit frig to start

OK the OP asked for thoughts so here are mine.

+1 for the basic idea it could add some new twists to the current crop of missions and as a dedicated mission runner I am all in for adding some twists.

The ability to opt out would have to be made available to all players and all missions.

Some potential problem areas that I see.

Vetting the players that would be used for this would have to be done very carefully to prevent abuses.
One way that this system could be abused is for the gankers to use it to their advantage. As pointed out there is not much a ganker could do to a mission runner if they are controlling the NPC ships already in the pocket. However add in a few of his friends in properly fit ships and they could easily take down even the best mission ships/pilots.

Would they be allowed to do whatever they wanted with the ships in the pocket, or would there be some limits applied?
This could be extremely important in the lower level missions where you would be dealing with low skilled new players and their occasional terrible fits..

How do you police this activity to prevent abuses?
Who polices this activity?

If one of these players was found to be in violation of the rules what penalties would there be?

If a player lost a ship as a direct result of a violation of rules by one of these players who pays for it?

Just some thoughts.

Thanks to everyone for all replies so far.


Now to the issue at hand.

It should be strictly opt in. You'd have to sign up for this (for both sides) and until that you'd get only AI opponents.


Yes, this is one of consequences and after some thought I'm okay with it. Increased risk for increased reward.


Basically you become a red cross. Or more accurately, you possess one or some of them. This could actually be nicely woven into backstory in the form of NPC corps hiring capsuleer consultants to guide their ships via telepresence, with usual NPC captain still being at helm and crew on stations. Thus on one hand the clone wouldn't be lost upon ship's destruction and on the other, capsuleer doesn't have all capabilities he'd have in normal sitaution. So no refitting, no fleeting, no podding, no warping, no extra bonuses, etc, but in turn you can for example tell this scramming frig to approach on spiral trajectory....


Vetting should be always supervised by CCP, even if not done directly. Later most if not all of policies can be enforced by technical means. NPCs are quite restricted, so I could risk an assumption that an abuse here would be by definition an exploit, so I don't see the need for extra attention in this regard. After all, you are here to kill the player and to prevent him from completing his mission, and he did sign up for this. How worse could it be for him?